And the Winner is

(Scroll down now to find out, or read this part first) Yes folks, the results from the new and improved* Young Adults at General Assembly (YA@GA) elections are in! First off, a big thank you to all our candidates who were willing to serve in this important leadership role and who spent time putting together their terrific videos and elections materials. Second, a big thank you to the 77 young adults who took time to learn about the candidates and make your voice heard by voting! And now, without further ado, the winner is... Cameron Young of Fort Worth, Texas! The staff at the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries and the current YA@GA co-facilitators are excited to welcome Cameron aboard and to work with him on General Assembly 2016 and 2017. We also learned a lot about our election process from this new experiment.

• 77 young adults took part in the voting, which is a dramatic increase from last year's on-site turn out at General Assembly.
• 78% of the voters were voting in YA@GA (formerly Young Adult Caucus) elections for the very first time. How exciting!
• About half of those voting had been to General Assembly previously, showing that even those who haven't been able to attend still care about young adult leadership at our national gathering.
• One third of those voting hadve attended either YA@GA or Young Adult Caucus, and an overlapping third had experience with Youth Caucus.
• 10% of voters had experience with Youth Caucus, but not with YA@GA, indicating we did a good job reaching out to some of our youngest young adults, who will be able to participate in YA@GA community in Portland or at future General Assemblies.

*How the Voting Process Was New and Improved. We chose to use a voting procedure where candidates were ranked numerically rather than obliging voters to choose just one candidate. We analyzed the results using a couple different methods (one that took into consideration overall scores, and another where we counted how many "first choice" votes each candidate received) and both of these methods yielded the same winner. We were pleased to know that the results were clear and consistent. So tell us, what did YOU think of this election process? What did you love about it? What would you change? Let us know so we can continue to improve our process and increase young adult participation in building our community. We can't wait to see those of you who will be at General Assembly!